There are few modern aspirants to Berthold Brecht's throne of thorns, the proudly avowed political, comic opera. This is both a matter of pride and of concern to Berkeley's Ed Holmes, a 17-year member of San Francisco Mime Troupe.
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A former Berkeley political activist turned investigative journalist is under arrest in Indonesia. William “Billy” Nessen, who was filing reports for the San Francisco Chronicle and England’s Observer newspaper on the movement to establish a free state in the Aceh province of northern Indonesia, is being held by the country’s army.
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Artists and advocates for the arts plan to gather on the steps of city hall in San Francisco on Wednesday to protest the proposed gutting of the California Arts Commission, the state agency that gives about $17 million per year to artists and arts organizations throughout the state.
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City Council took steps Tuesday night to keep closer tabs on Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which has clashed with city officials and neighborhood activists in recent months over a pair of large, proposed construction projects that activists say will damage the environment.
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Bay Area fish lovers could be risking their neurological health, as well as that of their unborn children, says a report released Thursday by the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research organization based in Oakland and Washington, D.C.
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The city Planning Commission voted unanimously Wednesday night on a plan charting the future of the area just south of the university campus. The vote was the culmination of five years of debate among city officials, neighborhood activists and UC Berkeley staff.
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One of Berkeley’s leading homeless services organizations won an $83,500 grant last week to help bridge the “digital divide” separating the computer savvy well-to-do from the technologically-challenged poor.
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Before heading to the Edward Albee Foundation’s artist residency program in Montauk, New York, I stopped to visit my friend Marlene. Marlene pulled up stakes and moved from San Francisco to New York City several years ago. Not so remarkable, you may think. People do it all the time. Hell, New York may even be cheaper than San Francisco these days.
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You folks will forgive me if I have trouble understanding Oakland City Council’s decision to try to sell Preservation Park. Maybe some of those folks with those nice Urban Planning Degrees from UC Berkeley will write me and make it all plain. Right now, it just don’t make sense to me.
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The deaths of two beautiful, intelligent young women would be tragic in any part of the world. However, the death of Ladan and Laleh Bijani, the Siamese twins whom doctors attempted to separate on July 8, carries an especially strong symbolic message for Iranians.
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The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) presents Summer Noon Concerts 2003, a unique series of nine free concerts, Thursdays at noon in June & July, beginning June 5th. From Rhythm & Blues to Brazilian capoeira, these concerts at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza (Shattuck Ave. at Center St.) are a showcase of the culturally rich performing arts in Berkeley. This outdoor summer celebration of Berkeley-based musicians & dancers is just a small sampling of the performing arts happening nightly in clubs, cafes, schools, theaters and concert halls in Downtown Berkeley.
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Residents are opposing a proposal by the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to construct a six-story office building on a sloping one-acre plot of land and pave over a nearby valley to build a parking lot. Many of those neighbors came out on Monday to take a tour guided by LBNL officials as part of the scoping process, a preliminary step required before a draft environmental impact report can be done on a project.
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If laughter heals all wounds then children's laughter is the most magical of elixirs. Watching a few dozen boys and girls laughing, shouting, flirting and chasing each other around on a basketball court can cure whatever ails you. Such laughter can heal children as well. For the last 20 years or so, Berkeley-based BORP (Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program) has been providing a hefty dose of Saturday feel-good medicine for hundreds of Bay Area children with physical disabilities.
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After five years of debate and dozens of public meetings, UC Berkeley and the city planning staff have come to a tentative agreement on the future of the area just south of the university campus, according to a Planning Department memorandum.
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Although I had heard some rumors about a building going up on the Oxford Street Parking Lot in downtown Berkeley, it was not until I read the article by Rob Wrenn that I knew what was being planned. Mr. Wrenn wrote: “Resources for Community Development (RCD) together with Equity Community Builders, has been selected as the developer for the City of Berkeley’s Oxford Street surface parking lot. The planned mixed-use project will include approximately 90 apartments, a majority of them below-market units. The plan includes 28 three-bedroom units and one four-bedroom. If built as planned this would be the largest amount of affordable family-oriented housing built in Berkeley for many years.”
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Hundreds of students, teachers, parents and education advocates will converge on Sacramento on Wednesday to pressure the state board of education to hold off on administering the high school exit exam, which they say unfairly punishes students who do not have access to quality education.
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Your June 27 editorial “It Could Get Worse” closes by urging the newly formed Wellstone Democratic Renewal Club to take “as part of its mission finding better Democrats for California races, so that we won’t be stuck with embarrassments like (Governor) Davis in the future.” We certainly intend to do our best to meet such a challenge. But you, like us, know this will be no easy matter. The challenge in getting better politicians into office lies in organizing and mobilizing a majority that will elect them. This might be relatively easy in Alameda County, but we’re not doing as well at the statewide level, or in most of the country. Indeed, we are witnessing a rightward shift that is fueled by an administration that is masterful at manipulating people’s fears and obfuscating the issues.
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Residents who are cited for code violations—from parking junkers on city streets to illegally converting their garages—will now be able to appeal their citations a lot sooner. But they may also face higher fines if they’re found guilty.
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Jim Schevill was born in 1920, in a woodsy hillside Berkeley home that barely survived the great fire of 1923. His father was creator and chair of the romance languages department at UC, his mother an artist and a scholar of Navaho culture and mythology. Despite the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler, Jim might have been expected to live a quiet life, like his father and his neighbors, in the security of academia, or, at most, deviating from that path to a career in opera. (“A dream. I had a light baritone, and asthma.”) In either case, a fortunate birth, a comfortable, if not wealthy future.
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“I think I’m predisposed to really love books,” said Indigo Som. “I mean, we’re in Berkeley, right? One of the reasons I live here is because you walk down the street and you look in everybody’s windows and you see massive bookshelves and books overflowing. Right? You can see people walking down the street, reading as they’re walking down the street. You know? I love that.”
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The Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA) presents Summer Noon Concerts 2003, a unique series of nine free concerts, Thursdays at noon in June & July, beginning June 5th. From Rhythm & Blues to Brazilian capoeira, these concerts at the Downtown Berkeley BART Plaza (Shattuck Ave. at Center St.) are a showcase of the culturally rich performing arts in Berkeley. This outdoor summer celebration of Berkeley-based musicians & dancers is just a small sampling of the performing arts happening nightly in clubs, cafes, schools, theaters and concert halls in Downtown Berkeley.
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